preparations

After staring, overwhelmed, at my closet and room I decided it was deadline time.  I needed to make a firm deadline.  In the matter of sending anything to the far reaches of Alaska, it will always take time.  The beginning of July was go-time if I expected my things to reach Marshall before I do.  I gave myself to the end of the week to get it all packed up and shipped out.  I had already began gathering a few supplies.

At the farmers market, with Rachel and Eurydice, I picked up a good stash of dried beans and mushrooms.

At the Asian market with Sarah, Kyra, and Rune I gathered a stash of staples.

Late one night alone at the market I stocked up on spices.

My packing plan involved five grey totes.  Four eighteen gallon plus one fourteen gallon, for books.

I decided to ship my serger and carry-on my sewing machine.  Hopefully, my collection of fabrics and quilts will be the necessary padding.

 

Everything will be padding, including this blanket from my mending basket.

The yarn worked well for this as well.

With five boxes packed, I saw a sixth would be necessary.

Stuffed with paperwork and school notes, this would be my heaviest box.  Naturally, it was padded with my hand stitched Madison quilt.

The deadline was met and it was all ready by Friday.

Joshua spent Friday evening helping me with the final step of packaging.  Each box had to be drilled and zip-tied shut.  This is standard bush Alaska packing protocol.

Once trimmed the zip ties were pretty sharp so I tapped over each with gorilla tape and finished off each box with clear packing tape around the lip.

The next morning the whole family piled in the minivan, Josh secured the parcels, and we headed downtown.  This is the only post office open on Saturdays and convenient for other errands that needed to be run.

Josh found a two-wheeled cart to carry the totes and two trips later they were all standing at the counter with me.

Thanks for documenting the moment, Josh.

It's a pretty intense moment to hand over nearly all of my worldly possessions to a stranger and hope that it will arrive in my same location once more. But, having done it also brought a huge sigh of relief to have that all taken care of and on its way.

The items on my lists are actually getting checked off.  That feels pretty good.  There are a few things which still must be done, but the bulk is though or scheduled.  Now I am enjoying time with all these people I love so much before I am far away.

This week I am still gathering some food supplies to send in flat rate boxes.  A little peak for those wondering how I, a sans-dairy (gluten-less) vegetarian, plan to survive in the far north.  Chocolate.  Chocolate and ketchup.  What more could a person ask for?

A nice side-effect of having completed packing is a less cluttered closet.

But, then again, full closets are more fun.